Today I canceled my YMCA membership and started to put together my own home gym. Bored with the usual gym accouterments, I've set out to build some fitness equipment on my own starting with a kayak balance stool.

I discovered this idea in Christopher Cunningham's book Building the Greenland Kayak. To make your kayak balance stool, find a piece of scarp wood. I used a 2 x 8 and cut it to fit my ass to toe dimensions. Cut two end boards, each a foot long. Attach the end boards to the sittin' board with some bolts or sturdy screws. The deeper the curve on the bottom of the end boards, the more tippy it gets. Cunningham suggests a depth of 1 1/2 inches to start. I'd suggest making that curve a bit on the "pointy" side, as any flatness will lead to a lack of tippitude.

Applications are being accepted now for the 4th Annual PITCH: Women 2.0 Startup Competition. The competition is open to any early-stage venture that's still in beta stage and has yet to receive significant funding. Applying teams must have at least one women and one technologist (engineer, scientist, etc) on the founding team.

To enter the competition, submit your application, your "napkin business plan," and film a quick video pitch. The deadline to apply is October 1.

All entries will receive written feedback from the judging panel of investors and executives.

Last month, 40 US billionaires including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett agreed to donate at least half their fortunes to worthwhile causes. Their actions reflect a keen sense of social responsibility and are consistent with a tradition first established by Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and other successful entrepreneurs of the past 2 centuries.

In the broadest sense, these behaviors can be seen as part of a virtuous cycle of American capitalism, in which our uniquely entrepreneurial culture creates both wealth and the philanthropic mechanisms by which that wealth can be recycled.

Some suggest that this cycle is the defining characteristic of American capitalism. In fact many conservatives and supporters of private enterprise believe this is single most important mechanism by which our economy differs from socialist economies, in which government takes responsibility for recycling wealth, and the economies of developing nations, in which the fortunes of those in control are almost never recycled.

A programmable credit card can display useful information, offer added security features, and even act as several different cards by rewriting its own magnetic strip.

Two types of programmable credit cards were unveiled this week at the DEMO conference in Santa Clara, California, by Dynamics, a startup based in Pittsburgh that's been developing the technology in stealth mode for three years. The company raised $5.7 million of funding last year.

The new cards are no bigger than the one in your wallet, and is actually slightly more flexible. It can display information at the press of a button, and can become several different cards by rewriting its own magnetic strip.

Listening to Governor Deval Patrick address a room full of venture capitalists last week, one string of comments bugged the heck out of me. The governor said that CEOs of big tech companies like EMC and Cisco, in comparing Massachusetts entrepreneurs and investors to their California counterparts, have told him that we:

• Are too insular
• Don't give entrepreneurs a second shot after a failure
• Don't network enough.

The "spirit of collaboration is not as robust" here in Massachusetts, the governor said.

I wanted to jump out of my seat. What crusty old doughnut still thinks any of that is true?

(Instead, I turned to Jamie Goldstein of North Bridge Venture Partners and said, "Someone needs to remind the governor how many times Ric Fulop failed as an entrepreneur before he started A123 Systems," the battery company that North Bridge backed, and which was the most successful IPO of last year.)

Seoul—Robots may not be that good at teaching—not yet, anyway—but at least you don’t have to do background checks on them.

Mun Sang Kim, director of the Center for Intelligent Robotics at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, knows where his robotic teachers have been. He and a team of more than 300 researchers are designing them from the ground up—attempting to give them realistic facial features, arms that let them gesture, and sensors so they keep their distance from students.

Corporate branding–it’s all the rage these days. Social media blogs wax on about the companies doing it right, the companies doing it wrong, and the companies that have yet to get involved at all. As a small business owner, it can be a little intimidating. How do you go about building a brand while building a business at the same time? Well, there a few places you should start.

Below you’ll find five ways to begin building your brand online. You’ll actually find it’s pretty painless.
1. Know what you want it to be.

You can’t build a brand if you don’t know what you’re trying to build. Social media is about amplifying your voice in a way that connects with customers. So what do you want your voice to sound like? Who are you in your space and what do you want people to associate with you? Everything you do on the Web and off of should work to strengthen that. Your actions now have a purpose – to create the identity you’re after. Once you know this, you have a road map for everything else.

The development of the nation's human capital through our education system is an essential building block for future innovation. Currently, the abilities of far too many of America's young men and women go unrecognized and underdeveloped, and, thus, these individuals may fail to reach their full potential. This represents a loss for both the individual and society. There are talented students with enormous potential from every demographic and from every part of our country who, with hard work and the proper educational opportunities, will form the next generation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) innovators.

The purpose of the STEM Innovators project was to explore ways that the country can foster the development of our next generation of leading STEM professionals, entrepreneurs, and inventors, who will form the future vanguard of discovery in science and technology. The Board's rationale for this project was twofold:

1. The nation's economic prosperity, security, and quality of life depends on the identification and development of our next generation of STEM innovators; and,
2. Every student in America should be given the opportunity to reach his or her full potential.

Tidal turbine technology company Openhydro, pictured, raised €15 million last year
Photograph: Alan Betson and Trevor McBrideIf the Republic is to be a hub for green finance, a new economic model needs to be put in place, writes SUZANNE LYNCH

IN THE coming weeks a major initiative on the “Green IFSC”, mooted earlier this year, is due to come before Cabinet. Led by a group called the IFSC Clearing House Group, the initiative will outline a strategy for Ireland to position itself as a hub for green finance.

The notion of a “green economy” has been held up by policymakers and industry leaders as the great hope for enterprise and jobs. Last November, the high-level action group on green enterprise, formed by Minister for Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan, concluded green jobs in Ireland could account for 4 per cent of total employment by 2020.

The green economy is becoming a world-wide trend and it doesn’t stop at the creation of green jobs to uplift the lives of many hopeful individuals. If previous news of energy efficiency development centered in the construction industry recently, then we are in for bigger surprises as Dan Kammen—director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley; and Ron Pernick—co-founder and managing director of Clean Edge unveiled the hottest green trends we can look forward to in the coming months.

For one, the call for more clean-energy investment will rage on following the call of US business elites led by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Bank of America chairman Chad Holiday this June for an annual $16 billion investment in clean-energy innovation. “Low-cost clean energy is the single most important way to lift poor countries out of poverty and create more stable societies. The whole world would benefit from this, and the United States can and should lead the way. The time for action is now,” urges Gates.

Pittsburgh, Pa – U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Brian P. McGowan today announced a $480,000 grant to the State Science & Technology Institute (SSTI) to launch the Regional Innovation Acceleration Network (RIAN) to assess innovation networks across the country to help identify economic development best practices and foster job creation. The announcement was made during SSTI’s annual conference in Pittsburgh, Pa.

“The RIAN initiative is a critical component of the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Jobs and Innovation Partnership strategy, the agency’s platform for long-term prosperity,” said McGowan. “Working collaboratively on this important effort, EDA and SSTI will help to strengthen our nation’s regions, and advance President Obama’s national innovation policy. The RIAN will play a connecting role in identifying innovative networks across the country and ultimately will help economic development professionals leverage assets and strengths in areas like the Gulf and Space Coasts.”

This is the fourth article in a series on what it takes to be a great angel investor (and why this should matter to entrepreneurs).  Part 1 – Access to Great Deal Flow – is here.

The first three skills I espoused were: access to the highest-quality deal-flow, domain knowledge of the topic area in which you’re investing and access to VCs to help fund the next stages of development.

As I’ve highlighted I believe we’re in a unique period similar to 2005-08 where the biggest tech firms of Silicon Valley (and some media companies) are scooping up small software companies as “talent acquisitions” versus accretive revenue / profit generators.  Markets like these are very kind to angel investors because you get taken out early and see a nice pop on your investment.

SINGAPORE: The Singapore government plans to spend S$16.1 billion over the next 5 years from 2011-2015 on research, innovation and enterprise.

This was announced on Friday by the Research Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC), chaired by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and also comprising several cabinet ministers as well as international leaders in science and technology.

The new allocation is a 20 per cent increase over the S$13.55 billion which was committed from 2006 to 2010.

The council said this reflected the growing importance of research and development (R&D) in Singapore's development as a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy.

A new survey from the Pew Internet research group says that applications on cell phones don't mean a thing to the vast majority of Americans.

Of all cellphone owning adults, Pew says 29% are using apps. More important for cell phone owners is taking pictures, text messaging, emailing and a number of other activities.

Real entrepreneurs ship, don’t ever forget that.

An idea is worthless until it has been translated and executed into a tangible product that your potential customers can use. Getting from inception of an idea all the way to shipping it seems like a pretty straight forward process, but so is war- get guns, tanks, draw a strategy, invade, and take over.

When you get caught up in the heat of a battle, I’m sure what seemed simple on the surface, isn’t so simple after all. Gunfire has a way of doing that. Shipping a product that customers want is kind of the same thing. The gunfire of confusion, resisting feature creep, and not having a defined process can make taking an idea from inception to shipping it terribly difficult.

Earlier this week, we flagged a digital archive of comic books from the Golden Age. Now we stumble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that showcases the complete Superman animated cartoon series from the early 40′s, all in Technicolor. Based on the original DC Comics character, these 17 episodes appeared on American movie screens (before the showing of feature films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were taken seriously as an art form.

Good Eats, the only instructional cooking show on prime time, lures more than 20 million viewers a month to the Food Network, thanks to its quirky humor, geeky insights, and DIY ethos. So it's no surprise that star Alton Brown, who also writes and directs each episode, brings those same traits to his James Beard Foundation Award -- winning cookbooks. Ahead of the debut of his latest, Good Eats 2: The Middle Years, we ask the Atlanta native to walk us through his kitchen and tell us about some of his favorite devices. If you're expecting a place packed with culinary paraphernalia, you'll be disappointed. "I use less and less stuff each year," says Brown. "My wife and I went to see the rebuild of Julia Child's kitchen in Washington, D.C., and we were both shocked to see the amount of junk in there. Tools that do one little obscure job. I thought to myself: I couldn't live in here! I'd suffocate."

Here's the prevailing wisdom on RIM, makers of BlackBerry, from the tech community:

Slow to react. Underpowered. Last-generation hardware. Ancient software. Refusal to expand beyond the corporate world. Lousy web browsing. Lousy multimedia playback. Lousy syncing. Barren app store. "Doomed to be the next Nokia."

Well, that doesn't seem to matter to John Q. North American Smartphone Purchaser. It seems as though reports of RIM's eventual demise were very much exaggerated, because the company's quarterly profit jumped a whopping 68% over the year-ago quarter. That's not only "not failing," that's an impressive showing from any tech company.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $57 million, including nearly $11 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to support clean energy technology commercialization projects for 33 small businesses across the country. These projects, funded as part of DOE’s Small Business Phase III Xlerator program, will help small businesses develop manufacturing processes to scale up production of their new, proven technologies.

Included among the selected projects is one for algal biofuels, three for vehicle technologies and four for fuel cells. Other awards included funding for renewable energy resources, industrial and building energy efficiency, a modernized electricity grid, cleaner fossil fuels, and the next generation of nuclear power.